“Birthing parent” language in work policy – inclusive or erasing women?

[InvisibleBumble]

Our workplace has just emailed all staff about changes to parental leave. Throughout the email they repeatedly use the term “the birthing parent”. There is no mention anywhere of women, mothers or maternity leave.

I’m honestly really uncomfortable with it. In trying to be “inclusive”, it feels like women - and our lived experience of pregnancy, childbirth and recovery - are being erased from a policy that is specifically about leave after giving birth.

I’m not anti-inclusion, but I do struggle with language that refuses to even acknowledge women or mothers in this context. Childbirth is not a neutral experience, and maternity leave exists for a reason.

It’s really bugged me, but I’m nervous about pushing back at work in case I’m labelled difficult or “not inclusive enough”.

Am I being unreasonable? Has anyone challenged this kind of language at work, and if so, how did it go?

Lol. Mature.

For clarity, surely they should use the same language as the law does.

A.K.A women

It just sounds silly as men cannot have babies.

Reminds me of how much I want to start referring to men as penis-havers. All the time.

The delivery penis-haver did not deliver as specified.
I met a pleasant penis-haver selling tickets for a raffle and so on.

If it’s acceptable in maternity policy, in the NHS and with Social Services it’s acceptable in normal day conversation surely.

I couldn’t care less if Bob the penis-haver identifies as Barbara the woman, because there is no such thing as a woman it seems so I should go by the genitalia or other internal organs I can’t see.. and if Bob has chosen to lose his penis I should use Barbara with the prostate …

Im not sure I’d mind so much then with someone calling me X with the ovaries, uterus, cervix, vagina (all assumed of course), who menstruates and has a tongue, earlobes …
I’m far too old for children again but I shall …refer to myself as a former birthing parent who lost her first child in utero at full term and my husband as a former non-birthing parent who lost a child when his former birthing parent’s uterus caused problems with the placenta.?

I wonder how I should refer to my disabled non verbal DD. Because she can’t identify as anything by choice. A never-birthing uterus, cervix, ovary, etc person with a non-working set of facial muscles for reasons unknown…

This would be fun if it wasn’t absurd.

Sorry to hear of your loss. And absolutely - it is all absolutely ridiculous and that's part of my issue with it. If they had simple wrote birthing mother or parent it would be fine and actually inclusive. But instead they have chosen to exclude the word mother, maternity and any mention of pregnancy. Not every pregnancy leads to a birthing mother like you said, but they're still entitled to protection and rights and time to recover...

@InvisibleBumble

Thank you.

This is what is so abhorrent to me. The absolute nonsense of reducing women - and it’s only ever women - to functions or body parts. I remember people telling me when I lost our daughter that I was “still a mother”. I fucking know I was and am. It is my baby in the ground and I’m her mother. She didn’t get to decide to play identity games.

Baby.. a word to describe a human shortly after birth (is baby an objectionable term?).

It’s going to be 12 years on 24th Dec since I had a c-section under GA (as that abruption nearly killed me too) and I’m still her fucking mother, not her birthing parent. I didn’t birth a live child but arguably I didn’t birth her at all (given the circumstances).

And as for the inclusion of mothers who aren’t giving birth - to be inclusive THAT is what a leave policy should state - a mother giving or about to give birth or who has given birth (in case woman is so extraordinarily offensive) and the child’s other parent (if needs be to eliminate offence at being a non-birthing mother or (of course) father).

Anyone who has ever given birth could apply for leave as a “birthing parent” unless it’s meant to kick in as a leave policy during live birth and not cover a pregnant WOMAN.

I am sickened by the insistence that “self-identification” excludes those with disabilities that render them non verbal or those with intellectual disability. How exactly can someone who can’t speak identify themselves as ANYTHING, let alone those with intellectual disabilities.

It’s just a fucking pandering to men, as always.. but the well-intentioned will pretend “there’s nothing to see over here”.

I personally had the absurdity of two Social Workers (on the children with disabilities team which is why I was talking to them) ask me if my daughter identified as female. I said absolutely nothing and watched them squirm and then say “we will assume she does”. Why was that assumption “okay”? As always the fucking able bodied box ticker cunts decide for the disband the female of the species.

I hate this shite!!!

Sorry in case I sound insane - I have 2 daughters- one dead and one living (the severely disabled girl)

How on earth does 'birthing parent' not only talk about women? If you give birth, you are a woman (or girl)

It's interesting the mixed feelings. I still feel like the deliberate choice to not use the word mother or woman or maternity is wrong. Being inclusive to a minority doesn't have to exclude the majority, surely?

But don’t they then often seek to be recorded as the infant’s father?
As though the word ‘mother’ will blister their skin and make their hair fall out, such is the need for validation in their new gender.
(Maybe it’s just the odd case here and there; naturally such a thing looms large.)

That’s not a serious refutation though, because this is all part of a much greater epidemic of misguidedness which is very much about erasing the space, experiences, and language pertaining to women, and basically ‘removing the ovaries’, if you will, in order that men may partake of womanhood just as they feel fully entitled to partake of every other thing they ever encounter.

Erasing reference to our existence in everyday language and turning our lives and our biology into a unisex free-for-all is an irony too awful to be amusing.
Even ‘The Female Eunuch’ never envisaged that women fifty+ years hence would be required to relinquish our essential selves and agree to this neutering, all for the benefit of men.

I think it’s for cases where there are two mothers and the baby has been donor conceived.

I agree it is important to differentiate between the mothers as one will have a physical recovery to complete.

Or birthing parent isn’t the biological mother - it’s her lesbian partner - lots of couples do that to create equal bonds as I understand it

I managed the non pregnant same sex partner who was eligible for 'paternity' leave. That language was non- inclusive.

I take your point that if it doesn't explicitly mention women then it feels exclusive to women. But there are people who don't identify as women so what do you do with them?

Ignore their nonsense, when they are women whether they identify as that or not.